Top tip: Keep track of your needle or hook sizes

How many times have you returned to a project or swatch to pick it up again and not known what hook or needle size you were using. The needles or hooks have long since been taken out of the bag to work on something else?

I would love to be one of those super organised people who tags everything they are making, noting pattern, needle size and yarn info on a helpful tag. The state of my life I’d probably manage to lose the tag! But I saw this tip somewhere in webland* a while ago and thought that this was a habit I could easily adopt. It has come in super helpful several times so I thought I would share it with you here.

I simply tie knots in the tail end of the yarn to note what the needle or hook size I’m using is. I tie knots close together, one for each mm of the size and then leave a space and tie knots for any decimals.

With the decimals it depends on the hooks and needle size conventions how I work them. For knitting needles you can get 3.25, 3.5 and 3.75 so I would tie 1, 2 or 3 knots in the decimals section respectively. For a 3.5mm crochet hook I would tie one knot as you can’t get (or at least I don’t own) a 3.25 or 4.25. Similarly a 4.5mm or 5.5mm knitting needle would only have 1 knot in the decimals section.

So simple, so effective.

*I have searched and I can’t find it again. If you know where I might have found it please let me know, I’d love to credit that clever person.